The Legend of Korra: Janet Varney on Book Two, Taking on Spirits and Fan Interaction

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Korra's star on what to expect as the show returns at last.

By Eric Goldman

The Legend of Korra fans have reason to rejoice this week, as the series returns for Book Two on Friday night. Early this summer -- before Book One’s premiere episode screened at Comic-Con -- I had the chance to visit a Korra voice recording session and speak to the voice of the title character, Janet Varney. While Korra episodes are recorded in their entirety by the voice cast before they are animated, Varney and Dee Bradley Baker were there that day to record pickups – adding new lines or giving different takes to scenes that had already been animated and now needed some tweaks from what was done at the original voice session many months before. I watched as Varney jumped from one very out of context scene to the next, taken from various Book Two episodes, giving a few different variations on a line before moving onto the next, under the direction of animation legend Andrea Romano.

Afterwards, I sat down Varney in the Nickelodeon dining area to discuss Korra long-awaited return, where the character is at as we meet up with her again, new additions to the cast this year and more.

IGN TV: When Book One ended, Korra had all her abilities back. Is she feeling pretty confident about what she can do as Book Two begins?

Janet Varney: I think she’s definitely relieved to have gotten as far as she has with all four elements, because obviously in Book One she struggled so much, especially in the beginning with air. And to be able to go into the Avatar State is kind of a great thing. But now the question is, are you going to overuse it? Are you going to abuse it? Korra, I think, still has trouble being reverent about the gifts that she’s been given. I think she still takes things for granted a little bit. Obviously, she’s still on a path, she’s on a journey. The other thing is, whether or not she’s gotten better at airbending, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s suddenly an incredibly patient person. So we see that in the first episode, because when she’s given this opportunity to move forward, maybe at a different clip or move forward with a new person, she feels like she can put her growing abilities to use in a new way that Tenzin might not necessarily have mapped out for her. Once again, she finds that impatience and that irresistibility of going down a different road. It’s still hard for her, and I think it’s still hard for us as viewers to know, has she learned enough to be making the right choice, or is she still making a "Korra choice", if you will. I think that will remain to be seen through Book Two. For me as a viewer I question that. Are you wise enough to know that for yourself? Is this going to be the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do? I think that’s going to be really interesting, to see how that unfolds.

IGN: This season is called “Spirits.” What can you say about Korra’s interaction with the spirit world?

Varney: I don’t know how much I can say about her responsibility in the Spirit World, because that is something that develops through the season and we’re only talking about the first episode. But I can talk about what I saw in the first episode. Mike [Dante DiMartino] showed me that sequence that you see in the first episode of that first spirit as it makes itself known. Once again, as I do, every time something new comes into our world of Avatar, I was like, “[Gasp]! What is that!? How did you come up with that? That’s so cool looking! It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before! It’s not like a spirit like Ghostbusters, like what a ghost looks like. That’s what a demon looks like.” It’s new. It doesn’t look like anything. You’ve never seen it before. It’s literally a brand new creature.

Question: The sequence that you’re talking about, is that the first battle scene involving the spirits, outside the carnival?

Varney: Yeah, in the snow. It’s in the snow with the lights and the carnival. It’s gorgeous. It’s so evocative and moody, and it’s so pretty until -- but it’s beautiful even with the spirit, the battle is so beautiful. It’s gorgeously animated. But I’ve never seen anything like that spirit before. I can’t say that looks like one of the spirits in Spirited Away or one of the ghosts in Poltergeist. I can’t say it looks like anything, and that’s what blows me away about Mike and Bryan [Konietzko] and our amazing team of chock-full-of-imagination designers, writers and animators. To me, it’s like, are you kidding me? We’re living in this world where we have so much media all the time. We have access to imagery all the time. For me to still feel like I’m seeing something brand new, I just think that is mind-blowing. I don’t know how they did it.

IGN: As you’re well aware, there are some fans who are very invested in the love stories on this show. Anything you can say about this in Book Two? Last we knew, this new relationship seemed to be blossoming with Mako.

Varney: I think that there is a dynamic that you will probably have anticipated based on the fact that you have two very strong-willed people. You have a very strong-willed personality in Mako, who, you know, kudos to him for being kind of a bossy guy and still making a decision to be with somebody who is sort of in the spotlight and who has very strong opinions of her own and is extremely skilled and also very temperamental. They both have short fuses, so I applaud him for going down that road. But I do think that in any kind of situation with this sort of -- I can’t believe I’m about to say this -- “high-powered couple,” like I’m talking about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.

IGN: [Laughs] Or Angie and Brad.

Varney: Exactly. Angie and Brad. You know, to have that dynamic happening is going to be challenging for both of them. So I think that it is a little bit of like, “Where do I fit? We know we want to be together,” but for both of them, “where do I fit into your world, and how do I interact with the rest of what you do and who you are?” That’s a challenge.

Continue to Page 2 as Varney discusses some new Korra cast members, kissing for a costar and fan interaction.